


more than survival

by Shadaras



Series: Dare to Live [2]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Friendship is Magic, Gen, Mon-El is an asshole, ending an abusive relationship, family dinner is very important, game night makes everything better, hugs can change the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-18 06:39:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10611327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/pseuds/Shadaras
Summary: (set after 2.16Star-crossedand its companion Flash episode,Duet)Kara disentangling herself from Mon-El, and remembering the love and support her friends can give.





	1. survive

**Author's Note:**

> alternate title/subtitle: _an ode to becoming free_
> 
> \---
> 
> This is one of the more difficult things I have ever written.
> 
> It is still a simplification of the actual process of leaving a manipulative partner.

It was dawn and the world wasn’t silent.

There were birds singing, of course, even in the heart of National City, but the other noises are more interesting—coffee machines whirring, cars waking up, children rousing from their sleep; the sounds of the city coming to life after a quiet night that was never fully silent. Kara closed her eyes, savoring the symphony of people going about their lives. The transition time between night and day was always calm. Being awake for the sun to limn the world in gold and wake her properly was also great, but not her reason for sitting on the roof of her apartment building.

She hadn’t slept well last night. If she was being honest, she hadn’t slept well since the Daxamite ship had shown up a week ago. She kept waking up, seeing—

Seeing _his_ face, which had slept next to hers, which had kissed hers, and which still—Kara felt concrete crumble under her hand and consciously opened her eyes and stared out, blankly, at the rose-touched clouds of dawn until her heartbeat returned to normal and her fingers relaxed enough that she wasn’t damaging the building—still wanted her.

The worst part was how she still missed him in her bed. The simple companionship of it, and being able to feel someone else living and breathing beside her—it had helped, on days when she wasn’t sure what she was doing with her life, because everything had been shattering around her, falling to pieces one at a time. Cat Grant was still gone. James was busy running CatCo. Alex and Maggie spent a lot of their free time together. Winn and Lyra had their own fun. Even J’onn was busier than he had been, with paperwork and oversight and his own technically-secret project of trying to keep in touch with M’gann.

Kara hugged her legs and stared out over the city. Glass shone sunlight back into her eyes, glittering, blinding if she let it be. She hadn’t worn her glasses when she’d come out here; hadn’t even bothered changing out of her pajamas, since it wasn’t like she was going to get cold or anything. That she’d woken up choking on tears and needed to move, to get out and go literally _anywhere else—_

She’d ended up on the roof because she missed her city, and because she wasn’t sure where she’d go if she did fly somewhere else. Bothering Clark would mean admitting she couldn’t handle things. Visiting Cat would mean needing to figure out literally any explanation for why she—either Kara or Supergirl—wanted to talk. Alex was asleep, and probably with Maggie, too. She could go to the bar and get drunk, but _he’d_ probably be there, and she still—still really didn’t want to see him.

“We _broke up_ ,” she whispered to the pigeons. “He can _go away now._ ”

More accurately, she’d broken up with him, and then he hadn’t listened to her, and then they’d been sort of back together, and then she’d _realised_ they were sort of back together, and told him to go away, and now...  
Now here she was, moping around on the top of her apartment building because she couldn’t think of anything else to do or anyone else to go talk to.

Everyone had slipped away by degrees and she had no idea how it had happened.

Eventually, the sun rose fully, and the city came into true life. Kara stared out over the world—glinting cars, street food, and children on their way to school—and then sighed. She’d go to the DEO. Even if there was nothing else, she still had to go to the work that was left to her.

Descending the steps into the atrium used to make her excited. Kara was pretty sure of that, at least. She’d walked— _flown_ , some days—in knowing that she’d be making a difference. Making people happier and safer. Making things _right_ for people who have no other recourse. And learning about herself and being Supergirl and what she wanted to be.

Now... Kara forced herself to take a deep breath and steady her heartbeat. Just because she could hear it beating double-time didn’t mean anyone else could. If she could just—

“Supergirl.”

Kara jumped. Only a little. Only an amount a human would find normal. She turned to face J’onn.

“I’m glad you’re feeling up to work after that... trickster incident yesterday.” J’onn compressed his lips a little at the sight of her face. Kara tried to smooth out her feelings. She’d thought she’d gotten everything, but—

 _Telepath,_ she thought, more loudly than she’d intended. Kara said, “Yeah! I was hoping we could maybe figure out where he came from, make sure he’ll never come back...”

J’onn was outright frowning out her now. “Let’s talk in my office, Supergirl.” His voice was level, neutral in a way that Kara had learned to associate with J’onn having many more emotions than he wanted to reveal.

Kara swallowed. Her heart was still beating too fast, and air felt like it was in far too short a supply. “Okay.”

They wound through the DEO. J’onn led the way, more for appearance’s sake than anything else; Kara knew where his office was plenty well, even if she almost never went there. She sometimes wondered if he had it more to make the human members of the DEO feel better than anything else, mostly because it was impressively bland inside. Cat’s office, which cultivated the appearance of being a media star with no life outside the news, had more personal touches in choice of pens and stationery and even her persnickety choices of drink.

J’onn didn’t leave any evidence of the life he had to pretend to have as Hank Henshaw, or even of the real life he did leave as director of the DEO. She never expected to see traces of his life on Mars, but she still looked, hoping that maybe seeing M’gann—especially writing to her—would leave him with mementos like other people had. This time, when they entered, it looked no different from any other—bland high-tech office where J’onn clearly spent very little time if he could get away with being in the briefing rooms tech labs instead.

Kara took the impressively generic gray chair sitting in the corner of J’onn’s office, facing his desk. He pulled another chair out of a different corner and sat in it, pointedly ignoring his desk. He leaned forward, hands clasped and elbows on his knees, and said, “Kara, I’m not saying this as your boss.”

“Ooookay?” Kara fidgeted with her hair. IF she were dressed as Kara Danvers, instead of Supergirl, this would be easier. “Then... what is this?”

“I think,” J’onn said, every word deep and clear in the ringing silence, “that you need a vacation. Take some time off.”

Kara’s mouth dropped open a little. “But—”

J’onn continued over her uncertain words. “Have fun. Apply for a new cover job.”

“But I want to _do something_!”

“And that isn’t doing something?” J’onn leaned back and raised his eyebrows.

Kara bit her lip.

“Kara, go eat ice cream. Take the rest of the week off.” J’onn smiled a little. “Take Alex, too. Otherwise she’ll overwork herself worrying about you.”

Underneath that, Kara heard _Just like you will_ , and looked at the ground. “But—”

“No more ‘but’s, Kara.” J’onn’s tone hardened. “Take the week off. That’s an order.”

“Yes, boss,” Kara muttered. She looked up. “Can I tell Alex?”

J’onn laughed. “Please do.”

Kara mustered up a smile and then left before J’onn could find something else to say that made her feel like the ground was going to move underneath her.

It took her longer than she’d expected to find Alex. She wasn’t in the briefing room, or in the shooting range, or bothering Winn in the tech department (and Winn hadn’t seen her recently, either), or even in the comm center. Finally, when Kara was returning to the offices, to tell J’onn that she couldn’t find Kara, she heard the scratch of pen on paper, and under-the-breath muttering that Kara was pretty sure she wouldn’t have noticed without her super-senses.

Kara paused outside the office, focusing.

“Fucking _government_ and their bullshit _damage reports_ ,” Alex was saying, quietly enough that Kara had to concentrate to be certain of the words. (But Alex had gotten very good at being quiet, with a little sister whose ears were far too sensitive for Earth, Kara reflected.) “Who even _gets_ our reports? They barely even acknowledge we _exist_ most of the time.”

 _No help for it,_ Kara thought to herself, and then knocked perfunctorily on the door before opening it.

Alex was saying, “Who is—” and stopped part-way through as Kara entered. Her expression shifted, from irritated to... something softer than Kara could remember seeing recently, except when Maggie was around. “Hey, sis, what’s up?”

“J’onn’s ordered me to get ice cream and take you with me,” Kara said, before the stretching-twisting sensation in her stomach could get any worse. She looked at the walls, not wanting to see what Alex’s face would do at those words. The office was clearly a place Alex used fairly frequently; the walls were covered with clippings of news articles about Supergirl, and diagrams of interesting technology that seemed to all be alien tech. Some of the things didn’t seem like Alex’s—the garden of potted plants in one corner, for instance, which someone else had to be taking care of.

“Does this get me out of having to do paperwork?” Alex said brightly. “Because that sounds great.”

Kara shrugged, and looked back at her sister. As expected, Alex’s expression was just a little too cheerful, in that forced way that meant she was a lot more concerned than she wanted to let on. It was the tension in her cheeks and around her eyes that gave it away. “J’onn’s making me take the whole week off as a break, after—” she gestured towards her head and let her irritation show “—that music business.”

“I see.” Alex looked down at the papers on her desk and made a face. She scribbled down one last sentence, and then signed the top-most sheet. “I’m all for you taking a break. How’d I get involved?”

“J’onn said—and I quote—that you’d overwork yourself if he didn’t make you take a break too.” Kara shrugged again, and moved so that she could lean on the wall. It still felt awkward. It just felt slightly less awkward than standing in the middle of the room. She wished that the Supergirl outfit had pockets. She’d need to ask Winn if he could add some. “And, I mean...” Kara looked down at the floor, and her feet. “I like the idea of getting to hang out with you.”

Her voice was way too small on those last words. Or timid. Unsure. One of those words. Possibly more than one. That hadn’t been her plan. Not that she’d had a plan, or at least not one she’d been aware of making until then. But no matter what, it wasn’t—she wasn’t supposed to fall apart like this.

“Yeah.” Alex shoved her chair back, stepped around her desk with those boots that always seemed like they should be louder than they were. “We’ve—it’s been busy lately, hasn’t it?”

Kara nodded. She didn’t trust her voice.

“Hey, sis? Look at me?”

Alex was standing in front of her now, Kara knew, both from her footsteps and the sound of her breath and the heat of her body. Kara wasn’t usually so aware of those things. Kara slowly lifted her head. And—there was the anxiety, the worry that she hated seeing on Alex’s face, especially when she was the one causing it.

But Alex smiled, tentative as it was, when Kara looked up. “So, you want to get ice cream?”

“I want to marathon some TV show and eat ice cream with you,” Kara said, more sure of these words. “Like—like sister night, except it’s not night right now, so I guess it’d need to be sister day.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” Alex grinned. “Let’s do it.”

Kara smiled back and followed Alex out of the DEO—after a brief pause for a costume change, of course.

* * *

The problem with super-hearing, sometimes, was that she could hear things she really didn’t want to hear.

Like _his_ footsteps pacing around _her_ apartment.

Kara stopped three apartments away from hers, working to keep herself from squishing the bag she was holding. “Alex?” She tried to keep her voice light, but she was pretty sure it ended up somewhere around ‘strangled’ or maybe ‘uncomfortable’ at best.

Alex stopped one pace in front of her, and turned slightly back, just enough for Kara to see a raised eyebrow.

“Mon-El’s in there,” Kara said, voice flat.

“Ah.” Alex tapped her hip, where her gun would sit if she were armed. She wasn’t. Or at least, Kara was pretty sure she wasn’t, because any gun that Alex currently had was something that Kara either couldn’t see or was disguised as something that looked innocuous. “Hold this, would you?”

Before Kara could ask what she was planning, Alex handed her the other bag—chips and dip—and strode forward. She opened the door to Kara’s apartment (and it was _unlocked_ , and she hadn’t left it unlocked, which meant _he_ had unlocked it and left it that way, which bothered her more than him being in her apartment to begin with, because he could at least have the courtesy of not making it easy for just _anyone_ to enter _her apartment_ ) and walked in with a storm in her footsteps and a growl building just under her breath.

Kara followed, focusing on keeping her pace human-slow and making sure her feet were the only thing propelling her. When she’d been a girl, newly arrived on Earth, she’d had to think about it: count _one_ -one- _thou_ sand, _two_ -one- _thou_ sand, _three_ -one- _thou_ sand, a second for each stride; a marching pace. She’d figured out other chants to keep time as she’d grown up, and learned how to keep control of the not-a-muscle that she used to fly, so that she stayed on the ground and only moved the length of her legs and not the length of her body or more with every step.

“Get _out_ ,” Alex snarled. Kara didn’t look towards her. She just slipped in the door and headed for the fridge. The glimpse she’d caught of Mon-El standing, baffled, in front of her couch was enough.

Mon-El started to protest, but Alex keep talking over him. “No. You’ve said more than enough already. It’s time for you to _listen_. You aren’t very good at it. You’ve proven _that_ more than enough. You came to Earth and the first thing you did was fight. You haven’t stopped trying to solve your problems by brute force, even if you’ve learned how to use that force in words and not just your fists.”

Kara set the bag of chips and dip on the counter, and pulled the ice cream out to put in the freezer. The outflow of cool air felt very nice on her face and her hands. She pulled out the ice tray and turned towards the sink. She could get herself some water. That would be good.

“You say that you love her, that she’s giving you a reason to be better.” The disgust in Alex’s voice is obvious. Kara can imagine the face she’s making, too: forehead wrinkled, eyes narrowed, lips turned down if they even stop moving from speech. Her hands are either on her hips or gesturing along with her words. “You could have proven it. You could have gone away with your parents and made Daxam a better place, like how we’ve all shown you is possible. But you don’t want to be _better_ ; you just want _her_.”

Kara turned the sink on, sticking a hand under the water to see what temperature it was. Cool, but not cold. She left it running until it was as cold as it was going to get, then filled a glass and put ice cubes in. The clinking of the ice rang counterpoint to Alex’s continued rant.

“She told you to leave. She said she didn’t want to date you. And you took the next opportunity to say that you were her _boyfriend_ —” despite how much Kara was trying to _not pay attention_ , she was still impressed by how much derision Alex managed to put into the word “—and not just her _friend_. And even if that would’ve been a stretch, nobody would’ve questioned it! Kara might even have agreed, if you had actually fucking _tried_ to be her friend instead of grabbing the next opportunity to claim something she had withdrawn her consent to!”

Kara put the ice tray back in the freeze and rested her forehead against its outside surface. Rough and cool, contrasting to the slick and cool glass she was holding.

“You were raised without learning anything but how to _take_ , but you could have _learned better_ , dickweasel. You’ve only ever done this because you wanted in her pants. Sex is great. I know it’s great. I don’t care about that. I care about you fucking her and using her and not trying to improve your ability to be a good _person_ because all you want is a good _lay_. Maybe your fucked up slave-owning monarchal patriarchy on Daxam made that seem okay, but Earth isn’t like that. My _sister_ Kara Danvers is Supergirl, and _she is not your fucking slave_.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Alex hissed, “Get out, you goddamn slaver. Get out, and stay out, and _learn something_ for once in your fucked up privileged life.”

Kara focused on breathing, and not breaking the glass she held. Her ribs felt too tight. Mon-El’s footsteps across the room didn’t help. Especially not when they stopped right next to Alex’s rapid, angry heartbeat.

Mon-El said, “Why are you speaking for her?”

His tone was something that really should be perfectly civil. His tone was something that Kara shouldn’t associate with every single time he _just didn’t understand_ something. With what was supposed to be honest confusion. Now, all Kara heard was the undercurrent of _Why isn’t this going the way I want it to go?_ and she ground her teeth in response.

Then she set down her glass, very carefully, and turned to face him.

“Because you’ve already proven that you won’t listen to me,” Kara said. She almost didn’t recognise her own voice. It was Supergirl, through and through—confident and powerful and not who she’d been with Mon-El. “So I thought I’d ask someone else to say some things for me.” She smiled, and tilted her head a little as Mon-El redirected his focus to her. “I guess I shouldn’t have bothered, though. You aren’t going to listen to anyone who disagrees with you.”

“That’s not—”

“It is.” Kara walked forwards, hands fisted at her side, until she was next to Alex. “Get out. You are not my boyfriend. You aren’t even my _friend_ right now. Friends _listen_ when they’re asked to leave.”

Mon-El backed away a step, and then his face contorted, and his hands clenched.

“If you attack us with no mind-control to provide doubt as to the reason,” Alex said, “then we will take you into custody at the DEO. You’ll just be another alien acting as a criminal on Terran soil.”

Mon-El did pause at that. Then he turned and punched the wall, not so hard that it broke, but hard enough for everything to shudder. Without another word, he walked out of the apartment, slamming the door hard enough for _that_ to break on his way out.

As soon as silence descended, Kara shuddered and sank to the floor, distantly feeling tears start falling. She was sobbing. She buried her face in her knees and curled into them. Distantly, she heard Alex telling her that she was going to be alright, and holding her, the way she had when they were young.


	2. revive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reconnection can be hard, but it's so important.

Kara woke to the smell of baking. She rolled over and opened her eyes, sleep-groggy mind expecting to see Alex’s bed there, in their shared childhood room. Instead, she saw a corkboard with articles about Supergirl pinned across it, and a window with the curtains pulled closed in a way she almost never chose herself.

She was awake, and in her apartment, and someone was baking. Kara sat up and put on her glasses, trying to figure out who they were. Alex wouldn’t bake—their mother had forbidden both of them from helping with any part of baking beyond chopping up nuts, fruit, or chocolate for filling, after a series of incidents involving screaming smoke detectors and ruined baking sheets—and she was pretty sure neither James or Winn had any skill with baking. Kara frowned, and listened more closely. Alex was laughing at something that Maggie was saying, blurring her words unless Kara _really_ wanted to eavesdrop.

Instead, she looked at the clock on her bedside table. It was almost 10:00am; she’d slept longer than she’d expected. That explained how Alex had been awake long enough to talk to Maggie, have Maggie come over, and end up baking something. Not what she’d expected to wake up to, but…

Very little of what had been going on in the past day had been what she’d expected.

She wasn’t entirely sure what she _had_ expected. Nothing this pleasant, though. Nothing that brought up so many good memories of weekend mornings and getting to sleep in. Kara smiled and got out of bed. She could just go out in her pajamas, but... that didn’t seem quite right. It was a beautiful day outside, by how the light was shining in around the curtains. She opened them, and the window, for the crisp sun-scented spring air and all the sounds of city life inside.

Then Kara put on a dress and tied her hair into a ponytail, and walked out of her room. She paused at the edge of the kitchen to watch Alex and Maggie.

They were leaning, shoulder-to-shoulder, around a laptop that had to be Maggie’s; Kara didn’t recognise it. Maggie was pointing at something, and Alex said, “I understand that this is supposed to be simple but also I’ve burnt eggs before. Multiple times.”

“I’m going to make you practice.” Maggie nudged Alex with her hip, and the smile lighting up her face twisted Kara’s heart. “I’m sure we can think of an incentive for paying attention to what you’re doing.”

Alex trying to look impassive and failing as a blush spread all across her face was too much. Kara giggled, and both Alex and Maggie turned to look at her. Alex’s flush deepened, and Maggie’s smile faded to politeness instead of clear love and joy. “Hi,” Maggie said.

“Sorry to invite her over without asking,” Alex said, forcefully cheerful. “But it—I was talking to her, and she suggested making breakfast, and we got onto how bad I am at cooking, so... here we are.”

Kara shrugged, and fidgeted with the seams of her dress. “Waking up reminded me of childhood.”

Alex’s face relaxed into a real smile. “Unlike Mom, nobody here is gonna make you wait for the—scones?” she asked Maggie, who nodded. “For the scones to cool so that you don’t burn your mouth.”

“Thanks,” Kara told Maggie. Then, tentatively, she added, “I’m glad you could come over.”

Maggie grinned. “I’ve got the day off, and this is a much better way to spend it than videogames. Just don’t eat all the scones, okay?”

“What games do you like?” Kara moved around the kitchen island where Alex and Maggie leaned into each other, to the fridge where she could see if she still had juice. Juice was the proper thing to drink in the morning. “It’s been ages since I’ve been able to get enough people together for a Mario Kart or Brawl tournament.”

“Oh, you’re _on_.” Maggie’s glee almost hid Alex’s groan. “Are any of your other friends free today? We only need one more, right?”

Kara looked at Alex, who just raised her hands and stepped back from both of them. “I am not part of this,” Alex said. “You can be competitive at each other instead of me, for once.”

“You start half the competitions,” Kara pointed out.

Maggie poked Alex’s side. “Go find out if anyone else is free. Maybe we can terrorize Winn again.”

Alex laughed. “Okay, okay. You might need to wait until evening, depending on what sort of weird schedule Winn’s on today, but I’ll try.”

“Just don’t let him invite Lyra.” Kara frowned at the fridge. Apparently she was out of juice. She pulled a can of sprite out instead; that was at least fruit-flavored and counted, right? “I don’t want to deal with their makeout sessions right now.”

“I’ll do my best,” Alex said. Her footsteps headed into the living room, and Kara heard her pull out of her phone.

Kara closed the fridge and opened her soda with a pop and fizz into the relative silence. Maggie had closed her computer, and was leaning on the counter, watching her. It was disconcerting. After not quite a minute (the timer on the oven made it easy to count that), Kara finally said, “Why are you staring at me?”

“I was wondering how long the silence would last,” Maggie said flippantly. Then she ducked her head a little and said, more quietly and seriously, “Alex told me what happened last night.”

Kara watched the oven timer tick down. “Oh.”

“I wanted to tell you I knew, because I can understand if you don’t want anyone else to know, but...” Maggie sighed. “Alex was pretty upset. And it’s your life, and I’ll never bring it up again if you ask me not to, but I wanted you to know.”

“It’s—it’s okay,” Kara said automatically. She blinked back moisture in her eyes. She wasn’t sure why it was there. “I’m glad Alex has someone to talk to.”

“Me too. But, um. Do you? Other than Alex.”

Kara opened her mouth to say _Of course I do_ , and then closed it again. Other than Alex? Winn was wrapped up in Lyra. Still. It was hard to interact with them. J’onn was busy running the DEO, and James was just barely getting comfortable running CatCo. Lena had her own life, and was a blessed treasure of positive interactions who didn’t know anything about Mon-El, and Kara wanted to keep it that way if possible. Kara curled into herself, found herself braced against the fridge. Who else did she even talk to? DEO agents incidentally. Her mother, sometimes. CatCo staff, about gossip and lunch orders and how Snapper was a jerk.

She really didn’t want to see how Maggie was looking at her. It was probably that same mix of compassion and something like pity that she’d started with. Kara drank some of her soda, bitter and bubble-burning against her tongue. When it had finished fizzing down her throat, she said, “I should,” and tried not to hate how hard it was to say the words and how much they felt like a lie.

Silence. That was bad. Alex was talking on the phone, what sounded like an argument with Winn about how friendship wasn’t less important than girlfriends and how he should hang out with people without Lyra for once. Then Maggie said, voice just as tight as Kara’s had been, “Is it alright if I hug you?”

“Huh?” Kara looked up, startled, and met Maggie’s eyes. They were just as inexplicably tear-filled as hers. Cautiously, Kara nodded. She couldn’t name why she did, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to, but there was something soft and liquid and breaking inside her, and Maggie was the cause of that but also that it wasn’t painful, and a hug wouldn’t make it... bad, though it might make it worse. So that would be okay. She also couldn’t explain to herself why Maggie—who she hadn’t even talked to all that much—would offer this, but... it would be nice, or something approaching that.

Maggie approached her cautiously, the same way Kara approached stray cats she wanted to pet and pick up and help. It pricked Kara’s pride, to be treated that way, like she might bolt at the first wrong move, but she could feel her heart thrumming and so that wasn’t really as far off as she wanted it to be. Maggie hugged her, slowly and gently, right up until Kara clung back, practiced instinct the only reason she moderated her strength to something that wouldn’t hurt Maggie’s more fragile human body.

Then Maggie’s arms wrapped around her with all the force she could muster, and Kara started crying. She could feel Maggie’s tears wet against her shoulder, and feel the way Maggie was trembling. She was doing the same thing, Kara noticed, a second later. Crying. Shuddering with it, even. And it felt okay. Not good—crying never quite felt good—but like an emptying that wasn’t actually covering for denial. “I wish this weren’t how it had happened,” Kara whispered.

“I know,” Maggie said. Her hand clenched on Kara’s back, just for a moment. “I do too.”

“Does it... get easier?”

Maggie didn’t answer. Her tears had slowed, though, almost stopped. Just as Kara was about to pull away, afraid that she had asked too much, Maggie drew back just enough for Kara to see her face, tear-streaked and red-eyed. “Yes, and no. You learn. You teach yourself that no, just because was horrible doesn’t mean it will always be horrible. You hold back, because you don’t want this to happen again. It takes longer to trust, but that means you spot warning sights. That means that you can take care of yourself. It’s a fucking awful way to learn that lesson, but it _lasts_ and you find the good in it.” Maggie laughed, a hoarse chuckle. “And then, someday, you’ll find someone who lets you have all those spikey protective bits and learns how to let you soften without denying you what you need to feel safe. And then, maybe, you stop needing to defend yourself all the time. And then, maybe, it gets easier.”

Kara swallowed, and pulled Maggie close again, hugging her instead of trying to find words for the bloom of warmth and pain and tears in her chest.

“You are Alex’s sister, and I will be here for you, just as I am here for her, like how she supports us both as best she can,” Maggie whispered, right by Kara’s ear. “Your heart is good, and you are wonderful, and I am so sorry that this happened to you.”

“Thank you,” Kara managed to say around the lump of tears welling up in her throat again.

The oven timer went off, beeping shrill and loud and utterly incongruous with the quiet Maggie had built around them. Kara didn’t move. Maggie didn’t either, didn’t even try, and Kara let herself be thankful for that, hard as it was.

A bit later, Kara heard Alex’s footsteps as she walked into the room again, saying, “Did something hap—” She stopped abruptly, and then restarted, more concerned. “Are you alright?”

Kara stepped back from Maggie, who smiled at her before going to rescue to scones from the oven. “Yeah,” Kara said to Alex, voice only cracking a little. Her eyes were dry again, though she was sure Alex could see the marks of how they’d been crying. “I think so. I’m definitely gonna be.”

Alex smiled so bright it was like the dawn, and that was the best thing, except for how the scones were coming out of the oven smelling like warmth and love. Kara grabbed one before Maggie had even set the tray down to cool, and Alex and Maggie both started laughing.

Kara bit into the scone and closed her eyes and delight at how it felt like eating contentment given form. _Yeah,_ she thought to herself. _It’s going to be alright._

 

* * *

Maggie made them watch _The Great British Bake-Off_ until James and Winn could get off work. “It's what reminded me I used to bake a lot,” she told Alex. “And it’s good comfort watching.”

Kara was pretty sure she got way too much enjoyment out of watching Alex go from skeptical to over-invested by the end of the first episode. And it was nice, watching people who were skilled at something they did as a hobby show off their talent and support each other. Maggie kept muttering comments about how one of the hosts was a gay icon at Alex, which made her turn bright red and made Kara giggle.

Around one—when Maggie declared they were taking a break and eating something—Alex stole Kara’s phone and called Lena, glaring at Kara the entire time. It would be very easy to steal the phone back from her, but instead Kara sunk into the couch and listened in on their conversation.

“Hi, Lena,” Alex said when Lena picked up, sounding a lot more cheerful than Kara would’ve expected. “No, this isn’t Kara, yes, Kara’s okay, she knows I have her phone and that I’m calling you. I’m Alex, her sister.”

“She’s told me quite a bit about you,” Lena said. Her voice was muffled by phone reception, but she didn’t sound stressed. That was nice. “I’ve always hoped to have a chance to meet you. Why do you have Kara’s phone?”

“I’ve declared today a self-care day for her. If you want to stop by her apartment and say hi, I know she’d appreciate that. And I’d love to meet you.”

There was a brief pause, and what sounded like shuffling papers. “I should be able to stop by between work and a dinner meeting, but not for long.”

“Perfectly alright. Whenever you can, she looks forward to seeing you,” Alex said, looking right at Kara. She buried her face in a pillow and didn’t acknowledge that.

“Excellent. Thanks for the call. I’ve got to get back to work now.”

“Of course. Bye.”

Kara breathed into the pillow. She wasn’t panicking. There was no reason for her to be panicking.

Alex set her phone down on the table and said, “She cares about you a lot.”

“We’re friends.”

“I know.” Alex sat down on the couch, right next to Kara so that their hips were touching. “Most CEOs aren’t friends with reporters, let alone people who will rearrange their schedules for them.”

Kara leaned into Alex and moved the pillow so she was just holding it, not pressing her face into it. “She likes that I’m not pretentious and that I don’t need to care about business politics.”

Alex wrapped her arm around Kara’s shoulders. “I’m glad you’ve got her.”

“Me too,” Kara said.

The rest of the afternoon slid by in a haze of British accents and steadily more impressive baking challenges. Alex only complained a little, and even that was half-hearted, when she ended up with both Maggie and Kara curled up on her, one on each side.

Half past four in the afternoon, Kara pushed herself off the couch to answer the knock on the door. Maggie hit pause on the TV as she got up, halting the show in the middle of the final judgements of pie towers. Alex muttered something about how of _course_ they’d get interrupted right at the dramatic end bits. Kara ignored her; James had texted her saying that he and Winn were on their way.

She opened the door to a massive hug from Winn. “You doing alright? I mean, I know you’ve got Alex here. And Maggie. Can’t forget Maggie. You haven’t missed much at the DEO, we’ve mostly been doing database management things, cleaning up files and things like that. Or at least I have. Agent Vasquez wouldn’t tell me anything about what other departments are doing, because, and I quote ‘If you tell that workaholic she’s missing something I’ll end you’.”

Kara met James’ eyes over Winn’s shoulder, smiling. James smiled back, eyes twinkling, and held up a plastic bag. “I’ve got chips and dip.”

“Thanks,” Kara said, more to James than to Winn. She returned his hug, and then backed into her apartment. “Come in. We’re almost at the end of an episode, and then we can get set up for gaming. You and Maggie can duke it out for whether we’re playing Brawl or Mario Kart.”

“Right,” Winn said, letting go and nodding vigorously. Kara intentionally didn’t notice the hickeys on his neck. “That sounds good.” He trailed behind her as she returned to the couch, settling in on her other side as she scooched Alex and Maggie into taking up less space.

James detoured to the kitchen to set down his snack offerings, and leaned on the couch behind them. Kara half-expected that to feel weird, but instead it just felt comforting, especially when she tipped her head back to see him watching her as much as the TV. “We’ll talk later?” Kara murmured, trusting that he’d be able to read her lips even if he couldn’t hear her over Alex and Maggie trying to explain what was going on to Winn.

“Yeah,” James said, just as softly. He knelt down behind the couch, resting his arms so that Kara’s forehead almost touched his elbow. “I’d like that.”

Kara knocked her head into his arm, heard his quiet, almost inaudible, laugh, and then settled in to watch the last five or so minutes of the episode.

The debate between between Winn and Maggie about which game to play was far shorter than Kara had expected. Winn started saying “Mar—”, Maggie raised her eyebrows, and Winn hastily shifted to saying “...Brawl.”

Maggie nodded in clear satisfaction, and Alex didn’t even try to hide her laughter at the scene.

James just laughed at all of them, and said, “I’m sitting this one out.”

“You don’t need to,” Kara said, looking up from the character selection screen that Maggie had pulled up far more quickly than she would’ve expected.

James shook his head a little. “I like watching. I _would_ like space on the couch, though.”

Kara started getting off the couch, and then Alex said, “I’ll sit on the floor,” and slid off the couch before anyone could contest it, moving so that she was leaning against Maggie’s legs.

Maggie patted the just-vacated space and said, “Move over, Kara. I’m sorry if I elbow you.”

Kara laughed and moved over, letting James take the space she’d been in. Everyone else had already chosen their characters—Alex was Samus and Winn was Pit, as she’d expected, and Maggie was Pikachu, which she wouldn’t have guessed—and Kara selected Toon Link to round out the set. Almost as soon as she’d confirmed her selection, Maggie started the match.

The room dissolved into a flurry of creative swearing and button-mashing. Kara was pretty sure Maggie did elbow her, probably by accident. She wasn’t sure how Alex was managing not to get hit in the head by either Maggie’s controller or knees, but she was, steadfastly maintaining her place with the calm steadiness Kara remembered. Winn was complaining at James about how everyone was teaming up on him, which Kara was almost certain wasn’t true; she was spending too much time trying to combat Maggie’s different style to focus on anyone in particular.

Kara wasn’t sure how long they’d been playing when she heard another knock at the door. She shoved her controller at James and said, “It’s okay if you lose; just go down fighting.” Before he could say anything in return, she was at the door. Since no actually aggravated swearing followed her, she’d managed to avoid pulling out any of the cables. She smoothed her hair back, and opened the door.

Lena stood on the other side, immaculate as ever. Also worried; Kara could see that in the slight crease of her forehead, and in the way sher held her purse in front of her. Probably that worry was about _her_. Kara breathed in, fighting the dizzying rush of emotion that sent through her, and stepped back. “Hi,” she said.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” Lena said, following her inside. Her eyes flickered towards where Winn was being entirely too proud of not coming in last for once, then returned to Kara’s face. “Your sister called.”

“Yeah, she had that conversation standing about three feet in front of me.” Kara reached up to fidget with her hair. “I... I am okay.”

Lena raised one eyebrow and set her bag down on the kitchen counter. She leaned against it, conveying ‘I’ll wait as long as it takes’ without saying a word.

For all that Kara knew how effective a CEO Lena was, she hadn’t been on the receiving side of her social machinations since they’d first met. She’d forgotten how effective they were. She shrugged, and looked at the ground, and told herself that none of her body language was helping Lena believe she was actually okay, and then said, quietly, “I broke up with my boyfriend yesterday. Or, well. I broke up with him a week ago. Yesterday Alex came and helped me yell at him so that it’d stick.”

“...oh.”

Kara squeezed her eyes shut as Lena laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’m going to be okay.”

“Of course you will. And you’re going to let me know if I can do anything to help.” Lena didn’t draw her into a hug, though Kara was certain that the only reason she didn’t was because Kara wasn’t moving. “We’re still having brunch on Sunday, of course.”

“Please feed me something less healthy than fruit and salad,” Kara said almost automatically. She looked up, smiling a little. “I think I’m still going to need that.”

“I’m not eating ice cream and potstickers for brunch,” Lena said, but she was smiling. “I’m sure I can think of something.”

Kara let herself relax, tentatively. “I don’t know if you’ll be able to get Alex away from video games right now. She’s kind of competitive.”

Lena laughed, and slid her hand down Kara’s arm to squeeze at her hand before releasing her entirely. “Just my kind of person. I really don’t want to interrupt. But, Kara—you’re my friend. You’re allowed to call me when you’re feeling bad, or overwhelmed. I’m glad Alex took your phone and called me for you.”

Kara hesitated, and then reached forward and hugged Lena. “Thank you,” she said, through the tears she didn’t want to shed. “Fuck, don’t let me cry on your nice dress when you’re going to a meeting or something.”

Lena returned the hug with strength that Kara always forgot was there, under the carefully crafted image of flawless elegance. “If there’s a blemish, they’ll think it’s a fashion statement,” she said drily.

“I still don’t want them to read something into your appearance you don’t want them to think.” Kara let herself press against Lena for a few heartbeats more, and then drew back. “I’ll call if I need to, I promise. And I’ll see you on Sunday for gloriously unhealthy food?”

Lena shook her head, smiling more honestly than Kara ever saw her in press photos. “I’ll see you on Sunday, Kara. We’ll talk more then, and I’ll find a place where you can have your unhealthy food even if I don’t eat it.”

“It’s a deal,” Kara said, sticking her hand out in a much more formal way than she needed to.

But Lena laughed, and so that was alright. “So it is.”

They shook hands with excessive formality, smiling all the while, and then Lena left, just as quietly and almost as impeccably as she’d come. Her makeup had smeared a bit, but Kara was pretty certain that nobody would notice unless they were looking for it, and even then they’d probably think that the blurriness of her eyeliner was from a long day and nothing else.

Kara returned to the videogame couch feeling inexplicably lighter. “Thank you,” she said to Alex as she took her place again. James passed the controller back to her without a word, and Kara muttered a curse as she tried to figure out where she even was on the stage.

Alex glanced up briefly to smile at her, and Maggie used the distraction to toss Samus off the stage with a gleeful, “ _Hah_ ,” that set Alex swearing.

Kara laughed, and let herself sink into the warmth of her friends and family. James’ solidity felt right beside her, and his running commentary in a mock-serious narrator’s voice contrasted well with Winn’s periodic spates of panic and Maggie and Alex’s taunting.

They only stopped playing when J’onn walked in without knocking and said, “Dinnertime.”

“Holy fuck,” Winn said, sniffing the air dramatically. “You brought pizza?”

In the general scramble to get food, Kara lagged behind so that she could hug Alex again. And, as forcefully as she could, she thought _Thank you_ in J’onn’s direction.

She was pretty sure, as she grabbed a slice of pineapple pizza just to hear Winn complain about it, that he said, _You’re welcome,_ back.

**Author's Note:**

> this is now marked as a series, because there are further conversations Kara should have with people (like James) that don't fit into the purview of this particular story.
> 
> this is also marked as a series because it fits in with my _other_ "goddamnit show-writers" fic, so I may as well officially tie them together.


End file.
